Verstappen’s warming advice for Antonelli

Andrea Kimi Antonelli finished a career-best second in the 2025 Formula 1 Brazil Grand Prix, although this was somewhat overshadowed by his role in a tangle with Oscar Piastri in which the Australian was controversially hit with a 10-second penalty.

While Antonelli’s inexperience has shown on some occasions this year, he has been spectacular and aggressive throughout – and his potential has been masked to some extent by car issues after Mercedes adopted a rear-suspension geometry it later decided to drop.

The respect Antonelli has earned among his peers was clear when no less an eminence than four-time world champion Max Verstappen made a point of congratulating him on the Interlagos podium. Later, when asked what advice he would give to a driver in Antonelli’s position, Verstappen was clear.

“Keep believing in yourself,” he said. “In a rookie season, you go through quite an emotional rollercoaster at times. Some weekends go better than others. Sometimes you have high hopes, sometimes that doesn’t work out.

“You make mistakes. You have good weekends. But at the end of the day, that’s all part of the learning curve. You have to make mistakes also to become a better driver, even in Formula 1.”

Drama has attended Antonelli’s season like a Greek chorus, beginning with an opening weekend in which he was eliminated from Q1 in Australia but raced to fourth place in difficult and changing conditions. He claimed his first pole position for the sprint race in Miami, but the middle portion of the season was blighted by a lack of rear-end feel after Mercedes shifted to the new suspension geometry.

Canada, where team-mate George Russell won and Antonelli finished third, was an outlier result which owed much to that circuit’s characteristics: most of the braking is done in a straight line and the corners are relatively slow. But it delayed the team’s decision to revert to the previous rear suspension geometry, precipitating Antonelli’s worst weekend of the year, in Belgium.

There, he was reduced to tears after being eliminated from the first portion of qualifying for both the sprint and the grand prix. At Spa it was Lewis Hamilton who came forward to put an arm around Antonelli’s shoulder.

Antonelli’s headline results have improved since Hungary, but there were those who felt he was at least partially responsible for the Turn-1 fracas in Sao Paulo which led to Charles Leclerc being eliminated from the race. At the restart following an early Safety Car deployment, Antonelli was slow to accelerate and had to contend with Piastri attempting a pass on the inside while Leclerc took the outside line.

It has been claimed in various outlets that Antonelli was in the “wrong” gear for the restart – third, while Piastri and Leclerc were in second – but the data indicates a more complex picture. All three drivers were overlapping brake and throttle to maintain tyre and brake temperatures and Piastri was simply able to get fully on the throttle faster, while Antonelli had to feather it twice along the main straight to quell wheelspin.

Rather more subjective is the sequence of events in the seconds leading to the moment where Piastri locked his brakes and pushed Antonelli into Leclerc: the stewards judged Piastri fully at fault, hence the penalty, while Leclerc made the astute observation that Antonelli turned in to the corner as if the McLaren were not already there.

“I think so far this year for Kimi has been a big learning curve,” said Verstappen. “But at the same time he’s very fast. I always saw that from every category that he was racing in. And for him to have a weekend like he had here – it was just super strong.

“He fully, of course, deserved to be on this podium today, and it also gives you a good confidence boost. The team, of course, is also helping him a lot to really exploit all the potential out of him. So he’s in a very good place.”

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– The Autosport.com Team